Thread: Russia launches Ukraine invasion

Originally Posted by russellsimpson

strong language. very strong language.

Indeed . . . almost as strong as tens of thousands of innocent civilians being slaughtered by the murderous Russian scum.

Almost

On Monday, Russian forces struck Ukrainian civilian targets in its most wide-ranging rocket attack since the early days of the war. While the size of Russia's missile reserve stockpile remains a closely guarded Kremlin secret, their number is widely understood to be insufficient to allow for the continuation of similar attacks on a sustainable scale.

Data posted by the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Monday afternoon reported that air defense systems had succeeded in shooting down 43 out of 84 Russian cruise missiles fired and 13 out of 24 armed drones, including 10 out of 13 Iranian Shahed-136 UAVs.

The missiles and drones that hit their targets landed in fifteen Ukrainian regions, causing power outages and damaging playgrounds, but doing little to affect the Ukrainian military's ongoing counteroffensive operations in the country's South and East.

Although a precise tally of which missile types were used in the attack was not made public, Forbes.ua estimated the cost of the Russian blitz to have been between $400-$700 million. The calculation was based on the assumption that Russia used the more expensive X-101 rockets ($13 million each) to hit its targets while also firing off a swarm of less costly munitions as a means of overwhelming Ukraine's air defense systems.

It is not only the sticker price that is limiting Russia's capacity to mount similar operations in the future. As Western sanctions continue to deny the Kremlin access to imported technologies, it has become more difficult for the Russian arms industry to manufacture replacement rockets.

"Russia's procurement of Iranian drones is in part an effort to augment their degraded precision strike capabilities," George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War told Newsweek.

"They need to find a way to offset problems in the production and replenishment of precision guided munitions (PGMs)," he added, "which have been caused by sanctions targeting the supply chain for Western-sourced components that go into PGMs."

Other military analysts agree that Russia's capacity to wage war on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure is limited. The question remains, "how limited"?

"As horrible as today was for Ukraine, the sliver of good news here is that Russia likely can't sustain this rate of missile launches," Dmitry Alperovitch, Chariman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, wrote on Twitter about Monday's barrage. "It's very telling that they have not had this rate of long range fires since the start of the war."

Still, estimates as to how long Russia might be able to sustain such a rate of missile launches are hard to come by.

"In early September I heard the figure of 60-70% consumed [since the start of the war]," Shashank Joshi, Defense Editor at The Economist, posted as part of the discussion as to how much of its PGM stockpile Russia has already used up.

This "60-70%" statistic matches information provided to Newsweek from an additional independent source. However, neither Joshi nor the second source had any clear insight as to how many replacement munitions Russia, despite Western sanctions, might have been able to manufacture since February 24, or whether the "60-70%" represented Russia's overall stocks as opposed to the portion of its armaments which had been designated specifically for use in Ukraine.

Russia's secrecy surrounding its military inventory means that the most successful private sector analysts are those most adept at reading publicly available tea leaves. Michael Kofman of the Center for Naval Analysis is widely regarded in the expert community as the pre-eminent authority on Russian military matters.

"I've seen a number of bad estimates," Kofman wrote on Twitter of Russia's potential remaining stockpiles. "These continue to reflect the false certainty of numbers. What can be said with some confidence is that the rate of [Russian] strikes declined over time, and the types of missiles often used suggested dwindling stockpiles of more suitable PGMs."

The overall picture emerging from Monday's series of strikes is one of an increasingly desperate Kremlin wasting scarce military resources on targets that carry more potential for psychological damage than for battlefield effect. While it remains unclear how many more such days of horror Russia has the physical capacity to create in Ukraine, there is a clear expert consensus that such capacity is limited.

It is also becoming increasingly clear that the Kremlin's hoped-for campaign of shock-and-awe did not produce the desired results. Although the Russian attacks succeeded in knocking out electricity in multiple Ukrainian cities for several hours, by Tuesday morning the power was back on from Lviv in the West to Kharkiv in the East.

"The Russians really do seem to be conducting deliberate terror strikes against civilian targets for no militarily meaningful purpose," Barros of the Institute for the Study of War added. "Perhaps they're attempting to demoralize Ukrainians, though I don't think the effort is achieving that effect."

Russia Using Up Missile Stockpiles 'For No Militarily Meaningful Purpose'

Russia Says Arrested 8 Suspects in Crimean Bridge Blast

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said it has arrested eight suspects in last week’s apparent attack that tore apart the Crimean Bridge and killed three people, Interfax reported Wednesday.


Five Russians, three Ukrainians and one Armenian were detained over their alleged involvement in the Oct. 8 explosion that collapsed a road segment and caused a major train oil tank fire along the Moscow-built bridge connecting the annexed peninsula to mainland Russia.


The FSB accused Ukraine’s secret services of organizing the explosion, with a Kyiv agent having coordinated the transit of the explosives.


“The organizer of the terrorist attack on the Crimean bridge was the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, its head Kirill Budanov, employees and agents," Interfax quoted the FSB as saying.

While Kyiv has not officially confirmed any involvement in the explosion, some Ukrainian officials celebrated the damage.


According to the FSB’s investigation, the attack was carried out by a Georgian-registered cargo truck that had been loaded with explosive devices.


"The explosives were hidden in 22 plastic film rolls weighing 22,770 kilograms (50,200 pounds)," it said.


The rolls left on a boat in August from the Ukrainian port of Odesa to Bulgaria. They then transited through the port of Poti in Georgia, then sent overland to Armenia before arriving by road in Russia, according to the FSB.


Investigators claim that Russian citizen Makhir Yusubov, born in 1971, was driving the truck westward to the Crimean city of Simferopol when the explosives detonated.


The FSB said its investigation is ongoing and vowed that all participants in the alleged attack “including foreign citizens” would be dealt with “in accordance with Russian law."


Some observers have raised doubts over Russian authorities' claim that the explosion was the result of a truck bomb.


Spanning 19 kilometers over the Kerch Strait, the $4 billion bridge is a key symbol of Moscow’s widely unrecognized claim over the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.


It has also been a key supply route for Russia's forces along the southern front of its invasion of Ukraine.


President Vladimir Putin personally inaugurated the bridge when it was completed in 2018.


The attack, which came just a day after Putin’s 70th birthday, is one of Moscow’s biggest humiliations in its seven-month war against Ukraine.

Russia Says Arrested 8 Suspects in Crimean Bridge Blast - The Moscow Times

Some observers have raised doubts over Russian authorities' claim that the explosion was the result of a truck bomb.

This frightens Putin, because it means he doesn't know what weapons Ukraine has up its sleeve.

Originally Posted by panama hat

tens of thousands of innocent civilians being slaughtered by the murderous Russian scum.

Where do you get this scary number of victims from ?

The number from UN is horrible, but your's.........

On Saturday, Ukraine showed why it is winning its war against Russia. On Monday, Russia showed why it is losing. Those two days revealed sharp contrasts between the two militaries. One is clever, well prepared, willing to undertake complex operations, and focused on maximally damaging its enemy’s ability to fight. The other is prone to bursts of rage and is open to committing any crime possible, but its actions are ultimately self-defeating.

The Ukrainian attack on the Crimean Bridge was typical of how the Ukrainian high command has waged war. Also known as the Kerch Bridge, the span was a legitimate military target. The road link between Russian-occupied Crimea and Russia itself has been helpful to the invaders’ war effort, but far more important are the railroad lines that run across it. The Russian army depends on trains for its supply of heavy equipment and ammunition. This reliance is a major liability. Especially after the Ukrainians have captured or destroyed so many Russian vehicles, the invasion force lacks enough trucks to ship supplies to locations remote from working rail lines. Though the level of damage to the tracks on the Crimean Bridge is unclear, their capacity to carry freight was reduced at least temporarily. Another attack might rupture them completely.

Earlier Ukrainian attacks against Russian rail capacity, most notably the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System strikes that started in July, have cut Vladimir Putin’s forces in Ukraine into two separate supply zones that do not support each other. Russian forces in the east, based around Donetsk and Luhansk, can draw their supplies from directly over the Russian border. But the Ukrainians have essentially cut the rail lines from those areas to Russian forces in the south and west. So everything needed by the Russian soldiers trying to hold off Ukrainian counteroffensives in the Kherson region must be shipped by rail over the Crimean Bridge and up through the Crimean peninsula. If the Ukrainians could sever that rail line completely, Russian stockpiles at the front would soon run down, food and medical equipment would likely grow scarce, and already tired Russian soldiers would eventually lose the ability to mount sustained operations.

Russia’s dependence on this one supply line has been a constant source of worry for Putin and his generals. Its evident vulnerability is one reason they supposedly went to great lengths to defend the Crimean Bridge from attack. This is what made Saturday’s operation so crucial: The Ukrainians identified a logistical target of potentially decisive importance, secretly developed a plan to eliminate it, kept word from leaking out, and then executed the plan with considerable success.

The operation came as a huge shock in Moscow. Unnamed Ukrainian officials have told media outlets that their country’s intelligence services had used a truck bomb on the bridge, but Kyiv still has not officially taken responsibility for the attack, much less disclosed its methods. The uncertainty allows Ukraine and its supporters to troll the Russians, circulating multiple theories about what happened, including the possibility that the bridge explosion was an act of sabotage by an anti-Putin political group in Russia. (Earlier today, Russian domestic-intelligence officials announced the arrest of eight people, including five Russian citizens, in connection with the incident.) The operation and subsequent propaganda efforts are bound to make Russians fear that the Ukrainians will attack the bridge again.

On Monday, the Russians responded in a manner that was both homicidal and pointless. Starting early in the morning, they fired almost every type of missile in their arsenal—including their supposedly accurate Kalibr cruise missiles; repurposed, less accurate S-300 anti-aircraft missiles; and Iranian kamikaze drones—against civilian targets in major Ukrainian cities. For two days they used this motley collection of expensive weaponry to show Ukraine their anger and muscle and to mollify nationalist hard-liners incensed over Russia’s recent defeats. Yet Russian officials are inadvertently revealing their powerlessness over much of Ukrainian resistance. The total cost of this Russian operation will be enormous. One advanced missile can cost more than $10 million—and Russia has fired many of them. Moreover, because of sanctions that keep it from obtaining high-tech equipment such as advanced microchips, Russia will have great difficulty replenishing its shrinking supply.

And what has it gained from this extraordinary expenditure? The Russians have hit little of military value. The missiles and drones that penetrated Ukrainian air defenses hit a bizarre assortment of mostly unthreatening targets—residential districts, public parks, a tourist bridge, some government buildings, and a few infrastructure facilities of modest importance. Far from damaging Ukraine’s ability to fight off the invasion, this week’s strikes have probably increased it in three distinct ways. First, they have provided the Ukrainians with more experience shooting down Russian offensive equipment. The defenders have learned to adjust to new equipment with impressive speed. So far, Ukraine has credibly claimed to have shot down at least half of the missiles Russia has targeted at the country since Monday, a sign that its armed forces are getting better and better at what they do.

Also, instead of weakening Ukrainian resistance, these Russian attacks will likely turbocharge it. Little historical evidence suggests that military atrocities against civilians weaken the morale of a country under attack. Such violence typically deepens the desire to resist the attacker. Already convinced that they were in an existential conflict with Russia, Ukrainians will now be even more skeptical of any deal Putin offers. They know that this is an enemy they can never trust. Russian soldiers in their weakened position on the front lines, and recent conscripts being hastily trained for deployment, will find themselves fighting an even more implacable and determined Ukrainian foe.

Finally, Ukraine’s allies are responding by providing more aid—including the vital air-defense equipment that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government has been eager to procure. Just yesterday, for instance, the German government announced that it had delivered an Iris-T air-defense system to Ukraine. The United States also says it intends to speed up the shipment of National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems. Going forward, Russia’s attacks will likely increase the pressure on other NATO countries to hasten the transfer of advanced weaponry to Ukraine.

So although Russia’s sadistically eye-catching missile campaign might play well on Russian TV, it is an expensive strategic disaster for Russia’s military goals.

Events since Saturday illustrate why the war has unfolded as it has. One tightly targeted, carefully planned, and well-executed operation opens up the possibility of great strategic gains for Ukraine. In contrast, an expensive, showy, brutal campaign by Putin’s military forces has only made Russia’s task harder. The Russians have misunderstood the fundamental dynamics of this war from the start, and their inability to adjust continues to be a great advantage for Ukraine.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...tm_source=feed

Originally Posted by helge

The number from UN is horrible, but your's.........

Isn't even one to many, Helge? Summarily executed, bombed and we don't know how many massacred in areas still occupied by the murdering scum.

Originally Posted by panama hat

Isn't even one to many, Helge? Summarily executed, bombed and we don't know how many massacred in areas still occupied by the murdering scum.

Yes, who knows how many more mass graves they will find in the occupied areas?

Of course that escapes the fuckwit scandihooligan.

The UN General Assembly on Wednesday issued a sweeping condemnation of Russia's attempt to annex four territories in Ukraine last month in a resolute display of global disapproval.

Thailand still being cowardly I see.

WASHINGTON― Ukraine’s allies need to “chip in” to create a complex mix of air defenses as Russia bombards Ukraine’s cities and the civilians in them, America’s top military officer said Wednesday.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin led a meeting of more than 50 countries in Brussels, where defense chiefs pledged to supply munitions for Ukraine’s air defenses. Even as Germany supplied its first IRIS-T air defense system to Ukraine, Pentagon officials highlighted the tough technical challenge ahead.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said air defense systems are the country’s “top priority” after Russia unleashed a spate of missile and drone attacks this week across the nation that reportedly targeted energy and civilian services, killing at least 19 people.

“The horrific and indiscriminate attacks against Ukrainian cities left civilians killed and civilian critical infrastructure destroyed,” NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday, according to media reports. “This demonstrates the urgent need for more air defense for Ukraine.”

In a news conference at NATO headquarters on Wednesday, Austin said the Ukraine Defense Contact Group discussed ways to increase training of Ukrainian forces, accountability measures of arms sent to Ukraine and the allied push to “galvanize our industrial bases to fire up production for the systems to defend Ukraine while meeting our own security needs.” He pointed to German and Danish investments in Slovakia’s howitzer production.

The spotlight was on Ukraine’s request for an integrated air and missile defense system, which Milley said allies would strive to fulfill. That would be made up of short-range, low-altitude systems; medium-range, medium-altitude systems; and long-range, high-altitude systems that together would neutralize the threat of Russian aircraft and missiles.

“What needs to be done here by all of the countries at the conference today is chip in and help them rebuild and sustain an integrated air and missile defense system, specifically old systems,” Milley said.

Ukraine has been using its Russian-made SA-6 and SA-8 air defenses to deny Russian forces air superiority and the ability to conduct combined arms maneuver. Now Ukraine is asking for Cold War-era Hawk systems ― a medium-range, medium-altitude system that Milley said is “an older system but it’s quite effective.”

Ukraine hopes to also receive donations of American-made Patriot systems, German systems and unnamed Israeli systems.

The undertaking would be complex. Disparate systems would have to be brought together, deployed, and made to communicate with radars and each other in order to acquire Russian targets ― and Ukrainian forces would have to be trained on it all, Milley said.

“So it’s quite complicated from a technical standpoint. It is achievable, and that’s what we’re aiming at,” he added.

The timing is an open question. When a Ukrainian reporter asked pointedly when the people of Ukraine “will be able to sleep well” and expressed concern about his family back home, Austin said the unpredictable nature of the conflict makes it hard to predict when it will be safe to travel in Ukraine.

Austin pointed to new pledges from the meeting for munitions for existing systems and Germany’s delivery of the first of four IRIS-T systems. IRIS-T is capable of defending against approaching missiles at an altitude of up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) and a distance of up to 40 kilometers (25 miles).

“I know that you’re concerned about your family,” Austin told the reporter, “and certainly that’s understandable. But we’re going to do everything we can, as fast as we can, to help the Ukrainian forces get the capability they need to protect the Ukrainian people. That’s very, very important to us.”

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon...russian-blitz/

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Statements made this week by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko have reignited fears that his army could join Russian forces in Moscow's war against Ukraine, but the authoritarian leader appears reluctant to lend his troops to the effort, despite perceived pressure from Moscow.

Russia has already used Belarus, its longtime and dependent ally, as a staging ground to send troops and missiles into Ukraine. Analysts say if Belarus' small and inexperienced military gets involved, the additional troops could help Moscow cut off some key transportation corridors, but likely wouldn't significantly boost Russian President Vladimir Putin's capabilities on the battlefield.

“The Belarusian army is weak and demotivated, and it is not willing to fight with Ukraine, which means that Lukashenko will try to give Putin anything but Belarusian soldiers,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “Lukashenko is letting Putin know: ‘I will help, but I won’t fight.'"

Lukashenko announced Monday that he and Putin agreed to create a joint “regional grouping of troops” and that several thousand Russian soldiers will be stationed in Belarus. Lukashenko offered no details about where the troops will be deployed, and Russia's motives weren't immediately clear, though the remarks come as Moscow is struggling to replenish troops lost on the battlefield.

Lukashenko also said that Kyiv is plotting to attack Belarus — and he cautioned Ukraine against attacking “even one meter of our territory with their dirty hands.” His defense minister, Viktor Khrenin, also warned Ukraine not to provoke Belarus, saying, “We don’t want to fight" and stressing a day later, however, that the joint force is for defense.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy assured leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers on Tuesday that Kyiv isn't planning military actions against Belarus. He said Moscow “is trying to directly draw Belarus into this war.”

Oleksiy Danilov, head of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, told Ukrainian television Tuesday that Belarus is being “held hostage by Russia.”

Fears of Russian pressure on Belarus aren't unfounded. Lukashenko, an authoritarian leader, has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for 28 years while relying on Russia’s political and economic support.

Moscow has pumped billions of dollars into shoring up Lukashenko's Soviet-style, state-controlled economy with cheap energy and loans. And in 2020, the Kremlin helped Lukashenko survive the largest mass protests in the country’s history, following a presidential election that the opposition and the West denounced as rigged.

Lukashenko has publicly supported Russia’s attack on Ukraine, drawing international criticism and sanctions against Minsk. Still, Lukashenko has repeatedly rejected speculations that Belarus would send its own soldiers to fight alongside Russia.

“Neither the Belarusian elites, nor the population are ready to participate in this incomprehensible war,” Valery Karbalevich, an independent Belarusian analyst, told the AP. Karbalevich said Lukashenko is trying to bargain, offering to keep Russian nuclear weapons on its soil and create the joint force, while also hinting at the weakness of his own army.

Part of Belarus' 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) border with northwest Ukraine lies only about 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital. Troops coming from Belarus would likely move west and target cities of Lviv and Lutsk, key transportation hubs for Western military supplies, said Zhdanov, the Ukrainian military analyst.

"It is vital for Russia to cut off the transport corridor, because via Lviv, Western weapons reach the east and the south, where the Ukrainian army is conducting a successful counteroffensive, and this can only be done from Belarus,” Zhdanov said.

However, Lukashenko’s army is relatively small — just 45,000 troops, including conscripts — and largely inexperienced. The Belarusian military holds regular drills, but hasn’t taken part in combat since World War II.

At best, Minsk will be able to deploy 20,000 troops — professional contract soldiers, according to Zhdanov.

Belarusian military analyst Alexander Alesin said Lukashenko can avoid getting involved by saying that his limited troops are needed to defend Belarus’ borders from its neighbors — NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

Lukashenko said earlier this year that the Kremlin's campaign in Ukraine "has dragged on” and even suggested that he could mediate peace talks, insisting on the need to end the war as soon as possible. Karbalevich said Lukashenko understands that Russia is losing the war and he ” is trying to crawl as far away from Russia as he can.”

Lukashenko is also facing public frustration at home, as Belarusians are feeling the effects of crippling Western sanctions and spiking inflation, which is already twice as high as last year.

“After mass protests of 2020, when hundreds of thousands of people demanded that Belarus' leader step down, Lukashenko is afraid of arming Belarusians. It can provoke another domestic explosion,” Karbalevich said.

And, Alesin said, Belarusians are not mentally prepared to fight Ukrainians.

“Unlike the Russians, Belarusians have absolutely no hostility towards the Ukrainians and don’t understand the point of this special operation. This may lead to mass refusals to comply with orders to shoot Ukrainians,” he said.

Belarus army would likely have little impact in Ukraine war

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Thailand still being cowardly I see.

The reasoning was explained in the BP...

“However, Thailand chose to abstain from the vote on the resolution because it takes place during an extremely volatile and emotionally charged atmosphere, and thus marginalises the chance for crisis diplomacy to bring about a practical and negotiated resolution to the conflict that may push the world to the brink of nuclear war and global economic collapse.

Thailand abstains in UN vote against Putin land grab

Originally Posted by panama hat

Isn't even one to many, Helge?

Ofcourse

But your numbers are tens of thousands off.

And wouldn't you agree that there is no reason not to post numbers in the vicinity of reality.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Yes, who knows how many more mass graves they will find in the occupied areas?

Of course that escapes the fuckwit scandihooligan.

Yes who knows

Kherson Region Head Requests Kremlin Help with Evacuations

The Kremlin-installed governor of Ukraine's Kherson region, which the Kremlin says it has annexed, appealed to Moscow to help evacuate civilians from the area on Thursday, in yet another sign that the Ukrainian military's southern counteroffensive is continuing to gain ground.


"Сities in the Kherson region are coming under daily rocket attacks," Vladimir Saldo said in a video post on Telegram, adding that civilian infrastructure was being targeted.


"We suggest all people of the Kherson region should, if they wish, leave for other regions to protect themselves from missile strikes," Saldo added.


"In addressing the leadership of the country, I ask you to help organize this task."


Saldo added that those choosing to leave the region would go to the southern Russian regions of Rostov, Krasnodar and Stavropol as well as to Crimea — the peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Kirill Stremousov, the region's Russian-installed deputy governor, stressed on Thursday that the appeal "wasn’t a call for evacuation."


"No one is evacuating anyone," Stremousov said on Telegram, adding that the measure was meant "to save the lives" of Kherson residents.


Kherson, one of the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow recently claimed to have annexed, made the request for assistance a day after Kyiv said it had retaken five settlements in the region.


Last week Ukraine, which unleashed a southern counteroffensive against Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine in August, said it had recaptured over 400 square kilometers of territory in the Kherson region in the past week.

Kherson Region Head Requests Kremlin Help with Evacuations - The Moscow Times

Ukraine Asks France to Prove Its Love With Weapons


Zelensky Asks for $55 Billion to Cover Budget Deficit and Fund Reconstruction - News From Antiwar.com



Ever get the idea you're being Had?

Originally Posted by sabang

Ukraine Asks France to Prove Its Love With Weapons


Zelensky Asks for $55 Billion to Cover Budget Deficit and Fund Reconstruction - News From Antiwar.com



Ever get the idea you're being Had?

It's OK, Puffy and his cronies will end up footing the bill.

Retired Admiral Mike Mullen said we have to ‘do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing.’


A former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said on Sunday that the United States needs to work toward ending the war in Ukraine as soon as possible, amid reports of escalating violence and talk of increased threats of nuclear weapons use.

Retired Admiral Mike Mullen — the nation’s top military officer during parts of the Bush and Obama administrations — assessed on ABC’s This Week that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “cornered animal,” a situation that he said “speaks to the need to get to the table” and negotiate.

Referring to President Biden’s recent warning of a nuclear conflict, Mullen added, “I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing.”

Mullen also urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top diplomats to figure out a way to get Putin and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to talk. “[A]s is typical in any war, it has got to end and usually there are negotiations associated with that,” he said. “The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”

The former Joint Chiefs chair also said the possibility of Putin using nuclear weapons is very real. “He has got some very small ones, which theoretically while devastating would localize the damage,” Mullen said. “He could pick a symbolic target. He could pick Zelensky’s hometown, for instance, as a target as opposed to having a big impact on the battlefield that would badly hurt the Ukrainian Army, which has fought so well.”

Mullen’s comments came just hours before Russia’s retaliatory strikes after a bridge connecting Crimea with Russia was blown up on Sunday.

Quincy Institute director of grand strategy George Beebe said the series of recent strikes from both sides makes a resolution to the conflict more pressing.
“It is time for the United States to supplement its military support for Ukraine with a diplomatic track to manage this crisis before it spirals out of control,” he said.

Former Joint Chiefs chair calls for talks to end Ukraine war - Responsible Statecraft

^ As much as I would like a cease fire and a negotiated settlement, I can't see it happening as long as Putin is wanting Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia to be part of Russia.

Any negotiation would have to be based on the boundaries at the start of the war. Putin won't accept this as long as Zelensky is in charge.

Looks like the war will carry on a while longer, until Russian public opinion kills it off or Ukraine run out of defenders.

It will end when Russia reverts to the 1991 borders. They should do that now if they were rational, as they are going to lose this war. There will not be any nuclear weapons, that is just more Russian fearmongering. Something you specialize in. If Russia used nukes in Ukraine, the radiation would blow into their own country, the same is true if they blow the Zaporizhia nuke plant.

It is bluster and nothing more. The offensive will continue.

Originally Posted by Troy

Ukraine run out of defenders.

That will not happen. Russia has already run out of troops and most of its units are combat ineffective and can no longer move forward. Ukraine is no longer on the defensive, they are the ones pressing this war at this point. Further liberation of territory is imminent.

If you have credible data otherwise, I would like to see it. For the last two months, Russia has done nothing but retreat.

Originally Posted by panama hat

Indeed . . . almost as strong as tens of thousands of innocent civilians being slaughtered by the murderous Russian scum.

Indeed.

KYIV, Ukraine — They exploded with dull thuds on the outskirts of towns and detonated in the center of cities with deafening booms. Strikes in Kyiv, the capital, left cars burning and splatters of blood on the sidewalks.

Through the week, the Russian military fired its most intense barrage of missiles at Ukraine since the start of the war in February, killing at least three dozen civilians, knocking out electricity across swaths of the country and overwhelming air defenses. One thing the missiles didn’t do was change the course of the ground war.

Fought mostly in trenches, with the most fierce combat now in an area of rolling hills and pine forests in the east and on the open plains in the south, these battles are where control of territory is decided — and where Russia’s military continued to lose ground this week, despite the missile strikes.

“They use their expensive rockets for nothing, just to frighten people,” Volodymyr Ariev, a member of Parliament with Ukraine’s European Solidarity party, said of the paltry military effect of the Russian cruise missiles, rockets and self-destructing drones used in the strikes. “They think they can scare Ukrainians. But the goal they achieved is only making us angrier.”

The war in the south and east continued apace through the strikes, with Russia mostly falling back but also attacking on one section of front in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

On Monday and Tuesday, the most intense days of Russia’s missile strikes, the Ukrainian Army continued its offensive in the Kherson region in the south, reclaiming five villages over the two days, according to the military command. Ukrainian forces also took back a village in the east.

“The Kremlin continues to struggle to message itself out of the reality of mobilization and military failures,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, wrote in an analysis published Thursday. “The Kremlin continued its general pattern of temporarily appeasing the nationalist communities by conducting retaliatory missile strikes.”

The war is now separated into two largely unconnected arenas: the battles in the sky, in which Russia is seeking to demoralize Ukrainian society and cripple the economy by using cruise missiles and drones to destroy heating, electricity and water infrastructure as winter sets in; and the battles on the ground, in which Ukraine continues to advance against Russian forces in two areas of the front line.

Russia has been using even the newest addition to its arsenal, Shahed-136 kamikaze drones purchased from Iran, principally for strategic strikes far from the front line, rather than in efforts to slow the Ukrainian attacks.

“Shahed-136s will not generate asymmetric effects for Russian forces because they are not being used to strike areas of critical military significance in a way that directly influences the frontline,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote.

The drones that get past air defenses instead buzz into cities, blowing up electrical power stations and municipal boilers used to heat neighborhoods in the centralized heating systems used in Ukraine.

Over the past 24 hours, the Russian Army and air force attacked around the country with missiles, rockets and self-destructing drones, from the region around Kyiv, the capital, to Mykolaiv in the south, near the Black Sea, the Ukrainian General Staff said in its regular morning report.

“The enemy is not halting strikes on critical infrastructure and civilian objects,” it said, listing 88 strikes, including with short-range rocket systems near the front line.

The strikes have refocused Ukrainians’ attention on the war in cities where a sense of normalcy had been returning, including Kyiv.

Even successful advances for the Ukrainian Army have been bloody and costly as the Russian military has been skirmishing and firing artillery to cover its retreat and continuing attacks in Donbas. Fighting raged along the entire front and in cross-border skirmishing with Russia in northern Ukraine overnight Thursday to Friday, the military command said in a morning statement.

nytimes.com

On Monday, Russia fired 84 missiles, many at Ukrainian civilian infrastructure targets, causing power outages in many cities. On Tuesday, Russia launched another 28 cruise missiles. And on Thursday, the Ukrainian Armed Forced General Staff said Russia had hit more than 40 settlements since the day before. In all, more than three dozen people were killed.

But no matter how many times Russia fires at Ukraine, pro-war Russian nationalists want more, even though targeting civilian infrastructure is potentially a war crime.

“It has to be done constantly, not just once but for two to five weeks to totally disable all their infrastructure, all thermal power stations, all heating and power stations, all power plants, all traction substations, all power lines, all railway hubs,” said Bogdan Bezpalko, a member of the Kremlin’s Council on Interethnic Relations.

“Then, Ukraine will descend into cold and darkness,” Bezpalko said on state television. “They won’t be able to bring in ammunition and fuel and then the Ukrainian army will turn into a crowd of armed men with chunks of iron.”

But the hawks, who are demanding publicly on TV broadcasts and on Telegram to know why Russia does not hit more high value targets, won’t like the answer: The Russian military appears to lack sufficient accurate missiles to sustain airstrikes at Monday’s tempo, according to Western military analysts.

“They are low on precision guided missiles,” said Konrad Muzyka, founder of Gdansk, Poland-based Rochan Consulting said, offering his assessment of Russia’s sporadic air attacks. “That is essentially the only explanation that I have.”

Even as NATO allies on Thursday said they would rush additional air defenses to Ukraine, the experts said the reason Russia had yet to knock out electricity and water service across the country was simple: it can’t.

Since May, Russia’s use of precision guided missiles (PGMs) has declined sharply, with analysts suggesting then that Russian stocks of such missiles may be low.

Tuesday’s attacks mainly used air-launched cruise missiles, which are slower than Iskander guided missiles and easier for Ukraine to shoot down, according to Muzyka. In March, the Pentagon reported that Russia’s air-launched cruise missiles have a failure rate of 20 to 60 percent.

“If Russia had a limitless supply of PGMs, I think that they would still strike civilian targets, because that’s what the Russian way of warfare is,” Muzyka said. He said analysts did not have confirmed information about Russian missile stocks or production levels, and judgments were based on the decline in usage of PGMs and Moscow’s greater reliance on less accurate missiles.

But a clue lies in Russia’s failure to destroy the kinds of targets that Ukraine is able to hit using U.S.-supplied HIMARS artillery.

“If we take a look at what HIMARS has done to Russian supply routes, and essentially their ability to sustain war, they’ve done massive damage to Russia’s posture in this war,” Muzyka said. “So technically, you know, if the Russians had access to a large stock of PGMS, they could probably inflict a similar damage to Ukrainian armed forces, but they haven’t.”

“They actually failed to,” he continued. “They even failed to interdict the main Ukrainian supply roads. They failed to destroy bridges, railway, railway intersections, and so on and so forth.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin is juggling so many military problems that some Western analysts are already predicting Russia’s war will fail. Others say it remains too early to write Russia off, especially with hundreds of thousands of conscripted reinforcements potentially headed to the battlefield in coming weeks.

Since day one, Russia has sustained shocking levels of battlefield casualties, battering military morale. It has suffered repeated defeats, including the failure to take Kyiv, a retreat from Snake Island, the rout in Kharkiv and loss of Lyman, a strategic transit hub.

Ukrainian forces also continue to slowly recover territory in Kherson region, in their ongoing southern offensive.

Russia’s military mobilization also remains in shambles, with angry draftees posting videos online almost daily, complaining of insufficient training and poor equipment. Moscow police raided hostels and cafes on Tuesday to grab men and deliver them to mobilization points, and military recruitment is continuing in Russian prisons, according to independent Russian media site SOTA.

Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King’s College London, wrote in a newsletter that Russia’s escalation of missile attacks on civilian targets Monday had achieved no clear military gain.

“Russia lacks the missiles to mount attacks of this sort often, as it is running out of stocks and the Ukrainians are claiming a high success rate in intercepting many of those already used,” Freedman wrote. “This is not therefore a new war-winning strategy but a sociopath’s tantrum.”

Putin’s “need to calm his critics also explains why he has lashed out against Ukrainian cities,” Freedman wrote. “The hard-liners have been demanding attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure for some time and they now have got what they wanted. But they will inevitably be disappointed with the results.”

“These attacks could well be repeated, because it is part of the mind-set of Putin and his generals that enemies can be forced to capitulate by such means,” he added. “But stocks of Kalibr and Iskander missiles are running low.”

Amid Russia’s military setbacks, striking at Ukraine’s power grid in recent days was designed to shock and terrify civilians, starve them of energy in the winter and break their will to resist, according to Maria Shagina, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.

One apparent goal of Russia’s strikes on six electrical substations in Lviv, western Ukraine, was to stop Ukraine exporting electricity to Europe, Shagina said. The strikes also crippled the city’s power supply.

“Now we’re seeing the escalation and weaponization of the critical infrastructure,” she said, adding that it was no accident that Russia had destroyed Ukraine’s capacity to export electricity to Europe at the same time Moscow has weaponized natural gas, cutting supplies to pressure European Union countries.

“There is some intensification of the war, in terms that Russia doesn’t hide even the fact that they have attacked civilian infrastructure, critical infrastructure,” Shagina added. “They’re trying to escalate the war as much as they can.”

Muzyka said Russia, ignoring international conventions, has consistently targeted civilian apartment blocks and infrastructure in two Chechen wars, in Syria and Ukraine.

“Definitely they focus on the power grid as a way of making civilian lives miserable,” he said. “For Russians, striking civilian areas, residential areas and anything that can potentially impact the lives of civilians is a military objective, because for Russia, the war is total.”

“Essentially what the Russians are trying to do is to wear down Ukrainians, decrease the morale, decrease the willingness to fight and from their point of view, hopefully increase the pressure on the Ukrainian government to enter negotiations with Russia,” he added.

Ukraine has asked Western allies for state of the art air defense systems to protect its civilians and vital infrastructure. But even as NATO pledged more help, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that getting those systems to Ukraine would take time.

“Unfortunately, the Western response is rather limited,” Shagina said, adding that Russia is trying “to use the full range of measures they can deploy against the West and Ukraine.”

But no matter how harsh the attacks, the hawks in Russia say it is still not enough.

Russian journalist Andrei Medvedev, a member of the Moscow city council, who runs a popular hard line nationalist pro-war Telegram channel, urged patience, saying the decision “to bomb Ukraine into the Middle Ages” had not yet been taken.

Another hawk, Alexander Kots, the war correspondent of Komsomolskaya Pravda, who has his own influential pro-war Telegram channel, said he hoped the strikes signaled a new kind of warfare that would bombard Ukraine “until it loses its ability to function.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...e-war-ukraine/

Originally Posted by helge

But your numbers are tens of thousands off.

You don't know that, helge . . . it could well be under by tens of thousands. As I said, the mass graves being found in areas the murderous Russian scum occupied and the numerous ones in occupied territory.

My saying 10 if it's 9 or 11 isn't even remotely as bad as the Russian scum actually killing them.

No excuses. They invaded a sovereign country without being under threat and with ridiculous rationale - I hope the scum responsible simply die a painful death.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Thailand still being cowardly I see.

Dictators and illigitimate governments have to stick together.

Originally Posted by Hugh Cow

Dictators and illigitimate governments have to stick together.

Those are the only ones that voted yes. Truly reprehensible.